


and throw them in the lake

by kermitfotia



Series: hearth and home [3]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, i don't know what genre this is. 80s movie???, yes it's lio's mom again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25007956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kermitfotia/pseuds/kermitfotia
Summary: Being the leader of Mad Burnish was often demanding, around the clock work. Not that Lio Fotia would really know that, considering that he was fourteen years old and his biggest concerns in life were how much mac n' cheese he could eat in one sitting, when he could get new tires for his bike, and when his ma was going to get home.On the other hand, his ma, being the leader of Mad Burnish, was concerned about a lot of things all the time. But right now, it was mostly if she could pull a jailbreak in time to be home for supper.
Series: hearth and home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748110
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	and throw them in the lake

**Author's Note:**

> ALRIGHT lots of things to say here so:
> 
> ✦ first off, absolutely huge thank you to fern for reading this probably a hundred times over, fielding dozens of silly questions, and for lending me mez for a cameo  
> ✦ speaking of ocs, a really fun fact here is that with three exceptions (two of whom are mez and winnie) every named character mentioned in this fic is named after a pop culture reference and i think the hardest one to guess is lio's cat  
> ✦ art!!! there is winnie art please check her out here from fern, and here from winnie, and here from me !!  
> ✦ just realized i have never said this on ao3 so: please know miss winnifred is a lesbian i ain't leaving room for doubt on that one  
> ✦ and lio is trans i am also not leaving room for doubt on that one its not relevant i just want you all to know  
> ✦ the genre here is 80s movie because if promare is metaphorically mad max fury road, i am like exclusively interested in writing the road warrior and thunderdome installments that don't exist  
> ✦ and on a last note if anyone wants a fitting soundtrack for this one considering the length its all of fleetwood mac's rumours and at least the first half of hounds of love

Mac n’ cheese was a contentious issue in the Fotia household.

See, Lio was not necessarily what would be called a picky eater. He knew what it was like to go hungry, and he would’ve eaten whatever he had to to get by (for the most part), so that was no issue. But given a choice? Well, he would eat the same handful of meals, over and over until he got sick of them. It seemed simple enough, easy enough, until it came down to what those meals were. (And the fact that their supplies were a limited selection, often rationed out to some degree under Winnifred’s watchful eye.) But the most controversial ongoing one was the mac n’ cheese.

Which was why, just past four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, Lio was using the time he’d been left home alone with to make a pot of Kraft Dinner. It might’ve also had something to do with the fact that he was fourteen years old and not a very good cook when left alone for the week. If he was a good cook, it would’ve been mac n’ cheese from scratch. He’d have to ask his ma or one of the ladies about that later.

At the very least he was using the actual element on the stove, because his ma had told him a hundred times over Burnish fire would ruin the stovetop, and he’d already kinda melted one of their pots trying to cook by holding it in his hands before. Plus not only would his mom would kill him if she came home to a ruined stove, but she might get mad at Fran too, cause she’d left him alone to do it.

See, Winnie had sent over Fran, one of her friends slash right hand Mad Burnish slash Lio wasn’t-entirely-sure-what-their-deal-was, to at least keep an eye on him if not stay overnight while she was gone. She’d stayed over most of the week, like she usually did. He also had their cat, Bell.

His ma liked to claim they’d only gotten a cat for mousing, but Lio wasn’t blind and he knew she was growing catnip in a planter in her bathroom window. Bell was a big ginger sweetheart who cried when she got stuck in trees because Lio could climb higher than she could without getting stuck. Fran said she was a big lazy loaf of a cat. Lio couldn’t really disagree with that sentiment.

And Fran? Fran was fine. Fran was a bit fun really; she made really good meals and brought over tapes for him to watch while she was at it, and even cleaned up after Bell, which Lio was loath to do—but Lio had sent her home again ‘cause his ma was due home tonight. And he was fourteen! He could take care of himself! As well evidenced by the mac n’ cheese currently stirring itself on the stove, because Lio was fourteen, and he was lazy, and it was all too easy to make a big ladle out of solid flame and make it spin by itself. (His ma would have him by the scruff of the neck if she caught him at it again. She said it was a bad habit to start, that it’d make the pasta gross.)

Plus, sometimes Winnie and Fran would start bickering when she got home from trips and Lio didn’t really want to watch his ma stand in the kitchen for half an hour with her hands on her hips, arguing over some gossip from last decade or whatever it was they were on about. He was pretty sure half of it was over a soap opera, or something. It sure sounded like it.

Lio sighed and slumped over further on the kitchen table, lazily spinning one finger in the air to keep the ladle going. Maybe he kinda really missed his ma. She’d been gone for nearly a week now, out on her business, and hadn’t been able to call or radio him since early Saturday morning. Sure, he knew it wasn’t  _ so _ bad, considering she was the big bad boss of Mad Burnish and all, and he was  _ kinda _ spoiled, and she always had business to tend to when she was home too, but she wasn’t usually gone for more than a long weekend.

She always laughed when he complained about it; she would sling an arm around his shoulder and tell him about the  _ “old days” _ , when she’d be out on a job for weeks, even  _ months _ . She’d spin stories of stakeouts she swore up and down really did happen, or of long-winded firefights that always ended with her winning. (He thought that sounded made up, but the rest of her Mad Burnish—even Fran—swore she had never lost a fight, or at least hadn’t in front of anyone else.)

Then, when he’d pout and say he didn’t want her to be gone for that long she would just smile, genuine and reassuring, and say something like,

“Don’t worry, I don’t do that anymore. It ain’t my job now. And anyways, I got you here at home! I wouldn’t leave you for anythin’, cross my heart and hope to die.”

And then she would muss up his hair and tell him he was gonna go grey before she did if he kept it up.

When he’d heard from her on Saturday, she said she’d be home by no later than nine or ten o’clock on Sunday. Fran had been there; she’d stayed over Friday night after one of the gals had brought over coldplates for supper the night before, and she’d just rolled her eyes with a grin when she had to watch Lio practically bounce around the house at five in the morning because Winnie had said she might’ve picked him up something near whatever was left of Nashville.

“I bet it’s my bike tires! I told ma I need the new tires for it soon, cause the ones I’ve got now are totally busted, and I can’t test drive my bike without tires,” Lio had practically paced holes in the floor, while both Fran and Bell watched him go.

“Naaah,” Fran had snorted, splayed out on the couch, still in her sleep clothes. “I bet she got’cha new boots, the Boss probably got you tires for Christmas.”

(She already knew what Winnie had gotten him for Christmas, because it was sitting in a box in her own closet, because Lio Fotia was an intensely curious and nosy child once you got to know him. It wasn’t bike tires—it was a telescope.)

“No way, I don’t even need new boots! I got some last year, they’re only just broke in. I bet it’s the tires!”

She had let him go for a while, whirling like a spintop around the living room, sending little sparks flying in his path. Flames and fires, he was a spirited child when he wanted to be.

After being woken up so early by the buzzing radio, Saturday had been a busy day. Lio had spent the afternoon out in the garage, elbow deep in the poor Toyota Corolla that’d been offered up on the chopping block after he’d last crashed it into a tree several weeks ago. Winnie had restricted him to building a bike now for a reason. It would’ve been fine if he’d only crashed it once, but wrapping cars around trees had quickly become a running theme, and the old Corolla had taken enough hits that it could barely be called a car. Fran had kept one eye on him, but he was well enough on his own if he was busy. Idle hands were the devil’s playground after all.

Sunday morning had brought an odd funk for Lio; one Fran didn’t dare comment on. He was such a naïve kid, in some ways. She just shook her head and turned on the kettle.

He was almost cold for once, having bowled down the stairs with a fuzzy blanket still around his shoulders that he neglected to take off until the sun was high in the sky. She made grilled cheese sandwiches and mugs of tea. Bell kept him busy. It’d been alright. He was starting to fret, in that kind of odd way he did, wringing his hands until they steamed and smoothing them through his hair until it started to fry straight.

But, that afternoon he’d still told Fran to go on home with a nonchalant wave. He almost made her laugh sometimes like that; he was the boss’ kid through and through. He’d make a great commander someday if he kept it up.

So, Fran had left him with a firm pat on the shoulder and a smile. “Don’t you worry your little green head, Fotia. Your ma’ll be home on time tonight.”

He frowned, looking far more serious than a fourteen year old had any right to be. “I ain’t worried.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just saying. It'll be fine. Hell, one time that woman disappeared on me for a month and showed back up at our old base like it was nothing, just on time for my birthday. Winnie keeps her appointments, even when she runs into a spot of trouble.” As she zipped up her boots she shook her head and sighed, “That’s what makes her such a damn good boss, and such an absolute hellion to live with.”

“What do you mean?”

Fran paused, then shrugged. “Your ma’s a hardass, not that a kid like you would notice,” she looked back at him again and snorted. “You two are peas in a pod! And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but you’ve even got the same serious face as her these days! You’re the boss’ kid, through and through. Either way, I’ll see you tomorrow when your ma is home. You give me a ring if you need anything before that, alright?”

Lio nodded, quick and polite as always. A lot of the Burnish around (especially the local Mad Burnish) thought his formality was a comical oddity, including Winnie, but she encouraged it too, calling him a proper little diplomat. If any of them were asked, well, most didn’t think she was too far off with that one.

Fran left him be with a nod and a wave, and Lio waited until she was well out of the yard to scurry for the pantry, sliding right across the floor on his wool socks. He rifled through it, although there was only so much rifling that could really be done here. It was summer, which meant fresh jam, but also meant the pantry wasn’t overly stocked. After all, they’d be eating out of it for half the winter, so most of the good stuff was in the root cellar.

But Lio wasn’t after anything his ma would classify as “good”. No, he was scrounging around like a raccoon for the last box of Kraft Dinner. (It was behind several stalks of rhubarb he guessed were next on the slate for jam-making purposes. Lio had kind of eaten all the pre-existing rhubarb jam. Out of the jar. Possibly with his hands. Like a raccoon.)

There would be more mac n’ cheese next week or so, because Fran had already let slip that they were due for some dry goods soon from the fine fellows who worked Mad Burnish supply routes, which Lio knew meant pasta. And pasta meant mac n’ cheese. Which his ma wouldn’t cook the way he liked it because she thought lighting a fire over it to make it go crisp made it inedible.

And that was why he was now bringing the pot over to the kitchen table, with a flame lit over the top of one finger, quite literally charring the top of it until it went dark and crisp. He kept one eye on Bell while he did it, as she was rolling around the tabletop, shoving around the placemats and chirping at Lio.

When he looked away for a moment, she rolled over and into his glass of water, knocking it over entirely. He sighed as he dried it up with a careful flick of the wrist, side-eyeing his troublesome cat.

“You’re a real fuss, you know that?”

She just meowed in response, looking as innocent as possible.

He sighed again. “Alright. I’ll take you outside with me when I’m done.”

✦✦✦

They really shouldn’t have gone in for those fucking bike tires. They really, really shouldn’t have.

Winnifred Fotia was a woman who, on principle, did not get in over her head. But if she was, say in a hypothetical scenario, someone else who could get in over their head, it would probably be an accurate statement to say that right about now she was perhaps in around her waist, and the water was starting to rise.

She really shouldn’t have insisted on those goddamned tires. Or at least, they shouldn’t have gone to Nashville for them. That detour had cost them valuable time, and now their schedule had been all but thrown out a window, which was to say she was still hours away from getting home and currently being driven to fucking Cleveland, Ohio. Winnie really hated Ohio, in the same way people hated certain foods. She hated Ohio like she hated canned meatballs. Every day, she was internally a little glad Cincinnati had practically been wiped off of the map.

Ohio or no Ohio, she was more than slightly screwed. Her fingers twitched underneath handcuffs, just begging to light up a spark. These were a newer model, ‘cause the ones they usually used out this way were honestly pathetic. They were  _ usually _ the kind even some of the weakest Burnish could snap like popsicle sticks if they knew where to heat and where to push. Bend and snap, easy peasy. Some of them had even used materials half of Mad Burnish had been able to turn molten in a millisecond, before any attempts at coolant could even kick in. But these ones didn’t budge so easily.

Benefits of being trailed all the way from Nashville: big city bastards had fancier shit.

Now, Winnifred was no quitter by any measure, and under most circumstances it wouldn’t have mattered if the wannabe-stocks handcuffs were made of tungsten or if the paddywagon was full of guards. The problem was that this was a tinderbox of a paddywagon full of  _ other Burnish _ , the cops had no idea what it was they’d managed to catch, and this whole debacle was supposed to be a simple in and out with a side order of escort mission.

Like, really, for fuck’s sake, Winnie had just gotten most of these Burnish  _ out _ of jail. And then they’d made a pitstop in Nashville. And someone had decided to commit some more arson while she was tire shopping, because it was kind of hard to shoplift tires. And now they were here, getting taken off to—drumroll please—Ohio.

She tapped the heel of her boot against the floor, impatient. Just under two dozen Burnish split between two icebox trucks. She’d had three Mad Burnish with her; two of them, Max and Jonesy, had had the good sense to scram back in Nashville, and at the moment she could only really trust that they were following orders past that. Hesty, her metaphorical co-pilot here, was in the other truck. They’d let themselves get taken in easy, because most of these Burnish were too, well, burnt out to put up much of a fight, and these wet blankets had no idea what they had on their hands anyways.

In most cases, it was easiest to just wait until they had you on the road, and then it was all too easy to start snapping handcuffs before anyone noticed. She had pulled that off with ease on many an occasion. But, of course, the cuffs were new. Maybe not necessarily new in terms of technology, but new for Burnish who weren’t living anywhere near a city-state. Winnie had seen them before, of course, she didn’t live under a fucking rock, but she’d never had to break a whole truck’s worth of Burnish out of them without blowing anyone up.

These ones were chunky boxes around her wrists, not nearly so easy to snap as the usual ice bangles out this way, and even worse for getting everyone else out of in any quick and easy fashion. Really, they were less like handcuffs and more like stocks—albeit tiny, shitty stocks. It would’ve been worth having a laugh over how cartoonish they looked if they weren’t already so troublesome.

Regretfully, she thought about how figuring out how to more conveniently break these cuffs would not only be a pet project for her later, but another lesson she would have to teach Lio before he was allowed out on that bike of his. It made something in her cold to think that, like her fire was snuffed out.

But here and now she couldn’t run the risk of going up in a boom of white-hot spectacle as per usual; it risked frying up the other Burnish to a crisp too. Especially in the state some of them were in. Not all Burnish could withstand the heat some of the more powerful among them could dish out, and it only went doubly so when they were in a poorly state. They’d just go up like matchsticks and burn out, caught up in the blaze until they overloaded and left nothing behind.

Once again, tinderbox.

(That’s what’d happened to most during the days of the Great Blaze. Winnifred knew that better than most; she’d watched it happen, had watched hundreds of the Burnish who hadn’t died in their own awakenings go up in the great fires afterwards, practically used as kindling to keep them burning brighter. Cities turned into boxes of matchsticks. Any Burnish who’d been around in those days tended to be uniquely aware of how easily their fires could burn.)

It was just a little tempting, the way burning up into the biggest blaze one could muster always was for any of their lot. But you didn’t do that to other Burnish. She had kicked people out of her own gang for less. Had burnt them to the bone for less.

Again, her fingers twitched, and Winnie smiled crookedly at the floor. She couldn’t afford to be so dour, and not just for the morale here. Although, at least the Burnish here weren’t too low on morale, they’d seen what the so-called Big Boss could do back during their last jailbreak, so they all seemed pretty confident she had a plan. She did not have a plan. Or—it was a work in progress. She was getting there. Her contingencies hadn’t covered this exact scenario, but that was fine. It was fine.

She stopped tapping her foot and leaned back against the wall, letting the rumble of the truck fill the silence instead. She rotated her wrists as much as she could in the cuffs, just enough to hear the bones crack as they always did. Then she closed her eyes, letting her fire reach out to Hesty, like finding a blip on a radar. The other truck was behind them, keeping a steady few metres of distance. Hestia was in the very back, sitting near the door the way any good Mad Burnish did. She sent a  _ ping _ back towards Winnie, a quick flare of heat that was just enough to be acknowledged, like a slight nod of the head. She could’ve broadened her scope then, after all, Winnie had a pretty damn big radius on a good day, but it wasn’t worth exerting the energy here. It wasn’t even really worth trying to gauge if there was an exactly even amount of Burnish in each truck, it was easier to just do a plain old headcount. Where the trucks were practically iceboxes, combined with the chill of the cuffs, it easily dulled paler Burnish flames and made it hard to pull any tricks without tripping an alarm.

Now, she sighed and pulled back inwards. Time to formulate…something.

First up was the cuffs. Although they were a pain in the ass, and in her case, sensitive enough to heat that she couldn’t discreetly prod around to find a weak point without getting hit with another freezing shock, they did have one vital weakness in her eyes. They were still handcuffs. Even if they were comparable to stocks and therefore couldn’t easily be rent in two, all they really did was keep her hands in place. If she was alone, if she was still reckless and young and stupid, if she wasn’t heavily accountable for the fates of everyone here with a kid at home to boot, she probably would’ve just blown them to bits and have taken the whole truck up in a blaze of glory. But that wasn’t a solution, and she didn’t know exactly how much heat it would take to break these particular cuffs anyways. That also meant that getting everyone out of them at once was a moot point too. Which ultimately meant this would have to be a solo derailment, or a her-and-Hesty derailment. That was fine, that was nothing new.

Winnifred liked to consider herself a problem solver. Granted, for many Burnish, problem solving consisted of the idea that problems were no longer problems if they were on fire. She really wasn’t one of those Burnish who just relied on her fire for everything, who took it for granted and leaned on it until it gave out. You didn’t become the leader of Mad Burnish with only one trick up your sleeve. (Especially when every Burnish pretty much had the same trick.) Plus, no matter her ranking, anyone was liable to get up shit creek without a paddle, or to end up in an icebox without a matchstick.

She put on a firm smile and resettled herself, giving off just enough heat to be hit with another jolt of ice and tried to let that numbness settle through her, to push that pinprick pain as far away from her as she possibly could. While  _ her _ pain tolerance might’ve been high, she knew how deep Lio’s resonance with others went without him even trying; she knew how soft he was, how once he had woken up with a jolt just because she’d accidentally sliced herself with a kitchen knife. She  _ knew _ how much he’d cried when they’d had to set his ankle properly after he’d snapped it and healed it wrong. The flames could protect any Burnish, but much like everything else, it was more intense when it came to Lio. Thanks to them he had barely ever known pain, never felt anything for more than a moment.

Winnie could handle getting roughed up. She didn’t care if their next handcuffs had you take your arms off to break out of them. She could take that. She’d weathered way worse of storms, and she hadn’t grown up without the sting that came between injury and healing; even after all these years Burnish healing still felt shockingly quick to her. But if it hurt Lio? Her own kid?

Well, mission be damned, her control might just slip and take everyone else here up with it.

✦✦✦

After dealing with getting rid of the evidence, which was to say viciously scrubbing the charred remains of Kraft Dinner out of both his own bowl and the pot, it was barely past five.

Lio gave a disappointed glance out the window. The sun wouldn’t set for a good while yet, and as a general rule of thumb, his ma didn’t tend to get home until after dark when she was out on business.

Bell meowed and swatted at his feet as he paced around the kitchen a few times, putting things just a little bit more back in order and casting a few more disappointed looks at the clock.

Then he wandered into the living room, quiet as a ghost in his own home as he crouched down to open a cabinet and thumb through Winnie’s albums. She liked collecting music stored in old formats; it was halfway a hobby, and halfway one of those “this has something or other to do with Mad Burnish and archive work” things. Plus, the newest tech didn’t always agree with Burnish. They tended to make some of it go a bit haywire. Lio was really bad for it, if he didn’t melt it first.

He settled on one that was old enough for the sleeve to be well-yellowed with age, if it wasn’t already kinda yellow, with the picture practically half rubbed away. He couldn’t read the title on it, from a combination of how faded it was and how much his reading skills were admittedly lacking. They were working on it. But Winnie liked this one, she liked most all of the ones she kept really, but it was this one that he’d hear echoing through the house on these warm summer evenings more often than not. It was familiar. Lio liked familiar—he’d grown to like the comfort of repetition now that he had the chance to have it.

It took a few moments of cautious finagling for him to actually get the record into the old player, and he had a brief flash about how his ma would absolutely kill him if he scratched one of her good vinyls in the process, but he managed to get it going alright. At least, it sounded fine.

Once that started playing, Lio bounded up the stairs to the upbeat guitar, making it up their narrow flights before catching the doorway of the attic in one hand to make the sharp turn. It only took a second for him to veer into his room and grab one of the few little books he owned off of his nightstand, tucking it under his arm as he rocketed back downstairs.

Bell was waiting for him in the mudroom, pawing at the boots scattered over the floor. Lio snorted and gave her a pat with one foot before she got up to follow him back out.

He settled himself on the steps, book in one hand, cat settling under the other, music drifting out from the open door and sun still bright in the sky despite the hour. In theory, a perfect summer evening.

Still, Lio was missing something.

There was an odd draft to the air outside, like an extension of the chill he’d been feeling all day. Lighting a fire in his palms, or anywhere else, didn’t seem to help no matter how much he’d tried it earlier. It was kind of like when your limbs fell asleep, and left behind weird funny needle-prick-numb feelings. Fran had said maybe he was just feeling a bit under the weather, and while Lio wasn’t sure if Burnish got sick, Fran had been Burnish for longer than he’d been alive so he figured she knew well enough what she was talking about.

He got up again, setting down his book before patting an apology on Bell’s head when she meowed at him for moving. There was a woven blanket on the daybed, so he grabbed that and threw it over his shoulders like a shawl.

On the way back out, he tripped over what must’ve been his own feet, sliding far enough on those damned wool socks that he actually had to catch himself on his hands; the impact sending a brief crack of pain up through his palms and into his wrists, striking straight up to his elbows and making him yelp. When he sat back on his knees, a soreness lingered in his forearms for a few moments, leaving him turning his wrists around and listening to them crackle as it faded.

Weird.

Maybe Fran  _ was _ right about him feeling under the weather.

Still, it was easy enough to shrug off a minute later, even if he did spend another few moments rotating his hands around and shaking them out, as if he had to thaw them out. There was a slight shake to them that wouldn’t quite leave, but he left it alone.

✦✦✦

Winnifred hadn’t broken a bone for the first time until she was nearly eighteen years old. It really didn’t matter much, because she couldn’t count how many she’d broken since. On accident, on purpose, for work or training or some dangerous notion of stupid fun.

It was really a trifle to snap her own wrists.

Even if they didn’t heal right away, thanks to the fact that she was too busy yanking them out of the cuffs, that was alright. She didn’t even feel it. Or, more precisely, couldn’t really afford to at the moment.

The cuffs were stubborn nonetheless, and Winnie made a vague note to put a real knife back in her boot, because it really all would’ve been easier if she could’ve just cut them off. Having to practically flop around like a fish, and then leverage her heels against the sides of them to yank her hands out when there were still also cuffs around her ankles, well—it was a whole brief shenanigan she would not like to repeat.

At least from there it was easy enough. Once the cuffs were off it was no problem to reposition her wrists, to burn away the bruising and the breaks and remake everything in its proper place. It was a well practiced skill on her part, nothing to worry about when she’d had to rebuild her own limbs from scratch on a variety of occasions. The ankle cuffs were far less sturdy, more like normal cuffs, but it also helped that she could send a Burnish blade through them like, well, a hot knife through butter.

The roof of the truck was barely tall enough for her to stand up properly in her boots, but she would take it. She grinned as the other Burnish stared up at her expectantly, as she could feel Hestia tensing, as she could feel her own fire rev up, and distantly, a certain blazing blip on her map reached out again.

It was time to get this show on the road.

✦✦✦

By seven o’clock, Lio had long since grown restless. When the record in the player had finally spun down to it’s last track and he’d gone in to take it off, he’d much more slowly wandered upstairs to put his book back. He had only gotten through two chapters of it, which really wasn’t a lot considering how short those chapters were, but reading was hard and English was hard and the letters were small and Lio far preferred when his ma would do it with him.

When he’d looked at the clock in the kitchen again, he sighed. The idea of spending the next several hours sitting out on the deck seemed dreadful. He didn’t even bother leafing through the albums again when he put the record back in its place proper. So Lio had shrugged his blanket off, folded it up, and headed for the hall closet.

He settled on pulling on one of his ma’s flannel jackets; it was dark blues and greens and insulated, and may as well have fit him like a dress. The sleeves went well over his hands, so he rolled them up, shoved them up to his elbows, and yanked on his rubber boots. They were green, and at some point had had little froggy eyes drawn on them. Seven o’clock was still a bright enough hour. Lio didn’t quite have a curfew, and it didn’t quite matter when his ma wasn’t home in the first place anyways.

The door rattled behind him as he circled around outside and took off into the tall grass behind the house, Bell marching behind him with her tail waving like a flag. Going off away from the gravel road there was a beaten path, mostly beaten down by Lio’s own two feet and his slightly oversized rubber boots that went  _ thump thump thump _ as he went.

It didn’t go very far, not even breaking the treeline into dense woods, but it did slope gently down. He not-quite-jumped down the short drop at the end of the path, letting his heels dig into the dirt and skid down until he landed on rocks. Fussy as ever, Bell meowed from the top of the bank, never willing to tarry too close to the water. Lio grinned and reached to give her a quick scritch under the chin.

The river didn’t run very deep, all sun-warmed water and smooth shiny rocks. But Lio liked it. He liked cupping his hands in the water and catching pricklies, liked to sift through the rocks and burnish them with his hands and pocket the nicest ones, liked to laugh at the sight when, on the hottest summer days, his ma would set up a chair in the middle of it and sit with the water up to her shins.

He kicked off his boots, no longer dumb enough to go wading in wellies that didn’t even reach his knees. Hell, he’d nearly cried the first time he’d managed to flood his boots and Winnie had really let him walk all the way home with wet socks and pants, as if he couldn’t dry them off himself. He was absentminded like that, easy to distract from the obvious sometimes like that.

His socks were stuffed into the boots, pants rolled up until they held in place above his knees, and it felt like he was still forgetting something. Lio put his hands on his hips and looked down at himself, out at the river, over and up at Bell, patted down his pockets. Oh. He’d forgotten a hat. Winnie always made him wear a hat out swimming or anything like it, cause some Burnish still got sunstroke and she was none too eager to find out if he did too.

Well, what his ma didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And the sun was starting to hang low in the sky anyways.

He didn’t just jump right in the water, splashing around and getting himself soaked; it wasn’t really deep enough to swim in proper either way, but that went doubly for this time of year. Instead, he cautiously stepped onto one of the bigger rocks on the shore, hot and smooth and round under his feet. A lot of the good stepping stones were also tipsy, but Lio had the advantage of being both small and gangly, all leggy like a frog.

There was a big, relatively flat rock near the middle of the stream, and it only took a hop, skip, and jump for Lio to land himself on it, easily swinging down to crouch on top of it with flat feet. He leaned forward, sitting on the backs of his legs to dip his hands in the water. It wasn’t  _ hot _ , not like bathwater or the teakettle, but it wasn’t cold either. This little river flowed gentle and quiet, hopping over rocks and brushing past his hands more like a brook than the tides of the ocean.

Minnows were swept by in the current and tickled every time one bumped into his fingertips, wiggling and darting over his palms every time he managed to cup his hands and bring them up from the water, only to let them slip back through his fingers. He didn’t have anything to keep them in this time, and Lio had never been keen on catching for keeps when he didn’t need it. You couldn’t eat pricklies anyways, they were just good for catching to put in a bucket, to count them up and watch them dart around before you put them back.

He caught a few more, let them go again, cupped up water and let it run back down again. This was really the most fishing he ever did. Even when Winnie took him fishing, he tended to play moral support, mostly because he didn’t like having to actually touch big fish with his hands. He didn’t like how they flopped and struggled and writhed all over when you took them out of the water, all slippery and slimy, and maybe still hadn’t entirely gotten over the time one had wriggled out of his hands and hit him in the face. Lio preferred hunting on land, thank you very much.

When he looked up again, the sky was lighting up with a proper sunset.

Slowly, he shook the water and silt off his hands and went to stand, rising up onto his feet in one gradual motion. It looked like the sky could’ve been on fire, all brilliant pinks and oranges and yellows, bright and burning and dancing. The rock he was standing on teetered a little with his balance, and Lio made a face and looked back down towards the water. As carefully as per usual, he leaned down, balanced one hand on another rock, and stepped off of his perch and into the river.

The water here came up just below his knees, reflecting the blazing sky back up at him. It took a moment to get his balance; the riverbed wasn’t the most steady thing to stand on either, mostly round rocks and loose sand instead of something like silky sloam. The kind of terrain that was kinda hard to stand back up on if you sat down on it. Lio would know that firsthand.

He stood up straight, head tilted back a little, and watched the sky as the sun went down. Despite what anyone might’ve said about his odd disposition or his fondness for watching the skies, Lio wasn’t really the type that watched a lot of sunsets.

He wasn’t really sure what he was doing here.

Up to his knees in a riverbed, watching the sun go down. He wasn’t sure how long it took, but those radiant colours gradually faded into a deep pink, offset by the dark blue dusk and flares of orange-yellows as the sun gently began to disappear behind treetops and mountain peaks.

It wasn’t dark yet, but it would be soon enough. Lio sighed, like he’d been holding a breath in this whole time. Waiting. He finally looked away and cast his gaze towards the shore, where Bell was now lazing on the toes of his empty boots, watching him too.

As he waded back through the water something like weariness settled over his shoulders like a blanket, not heavy but still sinking in. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it until he looked up again.

Standing with water flowing around his ankles, arms crossed, jacket hugged tighter around him than before, Lio frowned. He was lonely, lonelier than he had been, but he didn’t miss the sunset.

Maybe he was just sad.

✦✦✦

There was only a split second between Winnifred successfully prying the last pair of cuffs off of a Burnish, her brash announcement of “Everyone hold on!”, and her blowing the side out of the truck. In that split second, she felt an incredibly loud  _ Winnifred Fotia don’t you dare _ —hit her, from Hesty.

Just before the blast went off, she telegraphed back;  _ too late! _

She could practically hear Hesty sighing in her ears as metal rent and melted apart under the heat of a proper Burnish flashbang. The most annoying thing about dealing with normal vehicles, in Winnie’s opinion, was how fragile they were, and how setting off a detonation to get out of them would not only throw the whole thing off of it’s forward momentum, but on some occasions would flip it or even send it rolling a few times. Burnish vehicles were much more sturdy in that regard; more explosion-proof and much harder to knock off of their path. They made most projectiles look like paintballs. She really didn’t get how people couldn’t make their vehicles more sturdy.

Sure as sugar, the truck rocked violently to one side, not quite tipping but instead lurching and skidding sideways with the momentum of the blow. She’d gone for the right side, cause it would’ve been stupid as shit to pry open the back hatch when they had another truck directly behind them. Winnie grinned, one hand already holding onto a jagged metal edge, the other held ready and idle at her side, much in the same way flameless held onto holstered guns.

But before the smoke could clear, and before the truck completely stopped sliding, the left side suddenly…dipped. Or maybe tipped would’ve been the word, like this was fucking Titanic (1997) and the boat had just broken in half and gone nose up. Winnie was suddenly glad she’d been holding onto the side of the truck when nearly every other Burnish there went tumbling the other way with various yells and yelps, making the whole thing teeter horribly downwards.

Looking out the massive hole in the wall as the smoke wafted away and—oh. This is what Hestia had meant.

They were on a bridge, or, more accurately, currently halfway to going over the side of one. Over the commotion, a little voice in her head said  _ uh oh!  _ with the tone of a low budget Saturday morning cartoon. Winnifred thought, grimly, that her life was indeed like a Saturday morning cartoon.

Their truck teetered precariously as she watched other one turn around and slide to a stop from the corner of her eye, and she could hear Hestia starting to nag her through the flames already as another bang went off, and she had the brief thought that, well,  _ she _ wouldn’t die if this truck was to go bottom up, but everyone else’s chances might be risky. Especially if any freeze tech happened to go off in the river. That would be bad. (For everyone else, not really for her.)

A core issue, in her opinion, of being a practically immortal firepowered creature, was that she tended to be more immortal than most of the others. It was kind of a pain in the ass.

Being a quick thinker—and hoping Hesty could hold up things on her end—Winnifred gave a good stomp to the floor, making the whole thing lurch her way like a seesaw, and before it could swing back the other way she kicked off and jumped out of the hole in the wall, dug her heels into the pavement the moment they hit, and pulled. The metal was thin, and quickly going molten under her grip, and the pavement was starting to melt too, so—

Being an asshole with good ideas, she momentarily let go, and let it fall back and nearly off of the bridge for a moment as everyone screeched before heavy chains could materialize around the truck. She might’ve been strong, but it was much easier to will the flames up and over than to physically lift a vehicle with her bare hands.

Once all four wheels were back on the bridge, the Burnish inside were quick to scurry out, tumbling onto the road and flocking behind Winnie like chicks under a hen. She glanced over her shoulder, and Hestia was already standing outside the other truck, slowly clapping with the most deadpan expression. She was after pulling her hair back into a ponytail, so Winnie could really see the unamusement on her face.

“Good one, Boss. Did you take care of the guards out front? I just made bacon of mine.”

Winnifred raised an eyebrow and snapped her fingers, and the truck went up in a  _ woosh _ of flame. A silent second later, one of the Burnish behind her, a young girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty, timidly tapped her on the shoulder.

“Uh, Big Boss?”

“Yeah?”

“The feds fell out of the cab when we went over the side.”

Ah. “So they did.”

Hestia laughed and took the few steps it took to clap Winnie on the shoulder, giving an exasperated grin. “Well, it certainly takes care of any stragglers.”

She gave her Boss another pat and headed back to the still intact truck, making sure everyone had climbed out of the busted open back hatch. Winnie waved her own Burnish off, Hesty could give them a quick headcount, you didn’t need two whole high ranking Mad Burnish for that.

In the meantime, she frowned and summoned her rifle and slung it with the barrel over her shoulder, striding over to peek over the side of the bridge. The railing was bent away where the truck had hit; about as useful as an umbrella in a flood. The young Burnish girl followed her, trailing just behind like Lio sometimes did, although he’d always hang onto the back of her jacket. She swallowed down a smile—ducklings, all of them.

“What’cha doin’ Boss?” she asked, voice small as she looked around Winnie’s shoulder. She was barely tall enough for the top of her head to reach it, although that wasn’t saying much seeing as Winnifred was over six foot in heels.

Winnie hummed, low and contemplative. “Like Hesty said, gotta make sure there’s no stragglers.” And she pushed off the railing to twirl her rifle in her hands, flipping it the right way round while she surveyed the murky water. “Don’t worry about it.”

It was far from truly dark, but the valley of the river provided enough shadow to render whatever low sunlight was left useless to anyone down there. Lucky for her, for any eagle-eyed Burnish really, and not so lucky for anyone below. She squinted, bringing the rifle up properly.

A moment and—there it was, a ripple of movement in the water. She rested her finger on the trigger, the flames urging her on, but she took in a breath and waited. She could feel the tension in the girl half behind her too, white-knuckled on the railing and holding her breath.

“Easy,” she murmured, low like the crackle of flames.

It only took a moment, for a head to poke above water, flameless and stupid and dull. Another beat, not even the blink of an eye, and her finger twitched on the trigger and shot.

Burnish weapons were surprisingly quiet, with pulling the trigger more like the sound of a match being lit than the deafening crack of a shotgun. There was no safety, no need for it when your control was iron-wrought, barely even any point to having a trigger when a thought could set off a gun made of willpower and flame. But Winnie was what some might call old-fashioned, and liked to keep her tricks up her sleeves.

It shot like lightning, dark and cutting through the sky until it hit in a crack and a dazzle of light. He didn’t even have the time to turn around, let alone to see it coming.

She whistled, eyes not slipping from their focus. One little piggie down.

Not even a second later, and there was a flurry of movement this time, one scrambling out of the water and onto the shore. It was all too easy; the second you turned up the heat they jumped like frogs in a boiling pot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She let him run for a moment, idiotically designed uniform with its reflective patches all too visible in the dim light, just to see if any others would start running if they thought they were in the clear.

This one got a few steps up the steep bank, miserably struggling to get a grip on slick rocks and loose dirt. She would’ve rolled her eyes, but Winnie wasn’t stupid and made do with huffing a small smirk. He didn’t seem to realize he was already dead, the chicken she was letting run after it’s head had been cut off, until he slipped again and finally glanced over his shoulder. Well, at least he had  _ one _ survival instinct in him.

Their eyes met and she didn’t even bother clicking the trigger this time, letting the flames move in a reaction far quicker than the human body could facilitate. By the time his eyes widened he was already on fire. Just like lightning.

Winnifred wasn’t one of those types who took some kind of bloodthirsty gratification to her work, didn’t get lost in the thrill of the flames and adrenaline. She might’ve once made herself a reputation for being merciless on the field, and vengeance might’ve been a personal temptation, but she wasn’t cruel. In another life, she might’ve even been a pacifist. Maybe. It was kind of a big maybe. She was an anarchist, not a hippie. As it stood, work was work, and it was nothing but the grim satisfaction of a job well done when she gave it another few blinks before she could dispel her shotgun and let her posture go lax.

Either way, this was like shooting fish in a barrel, or pigs in a blanket.

She had nearly forgotten about the girl beside her until she looked up at her, bouncing once on her feet with stars in her eyes. “And that’s it?”

It reminded her of Lio, of how he was always so eager to learn, and how this was precisely the kind of life she didn’t want him to lead; to watch her take lives while barely lifting a finger and still look at her like she’d gone and hung the sun in the sky. It put a twist in her, a tired sort of weight, to think about him in this girl’s place. In some, Winnie thought, there was an oft-ignored cruelness in naivety. She sighed, heavy, and ruffled the kid’s hair with one warm hand.

“Yeah, kid. That’s it.”

The second she lifted her hand, the kid took off, running towards the others and chit-chattering away. Winnie shoved her hands in her coat pockets, rubbing her thumb up along her fingertips in a mimic of snapping fingers, something like a tic. She couldn’t remember which pocket she’d left her smokes in, so she left her hands to fidget, made sure to straighten her back, and ambled along.

She took up a spot behind Hestia, who shot her a glance and put one hand on her on her hip.

“Hey Boss, what crawled up your ass and died?” she called, and Winnie flipped her off, and the rest of the Burnish laughed, all in high spirits once again. It was a friendly bicker to them, with Winnie’s straight-backed confident gait, Hestia’s sardonic smile.

But as they went about figuring out rides, debating whether to commandeer the intact truck, pulling out a radio to find their best reroute, Hestia kept one eye on Winnie. She was old enough, had been around long enough, to remember when the Big Boss and her moods had been torrential.

She was good at playing placid, at being the steady candle-flame in the wind, but Hestia had long-since learned to watch for shadows under the wick lest they turn out to be gunpowder. Winnie was, by all means, an exceptionally levelheaded and serious Burnish, she had to be to still be alive. But, and it was a significant but, any Burnish that powerful had to have a certain…intensity. Had to, to still be alive. Any match could be a forest fire, and any dormant volcano could erupt.

So she watched Winnie pull a cigarette out of her back pocket and kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t afraid of her boss, per se, but instead almost pitied her in a way. And knowing Winnifred Fotia, she would take that worse than if she was afraid.

Maybe they were all jaded and it had gone to all their heads, but fear? Fear was easy. It was so easy to grab onto and twist into something useful. Pity was heavy. Guilt was heavy. Necessary dampeners to keep from becoming tinder. If you let go, you’d go up in flames.

At least, in Hestia’s opinion.

The Burnish she’d handed her radio off to, a small-time Mad Burnish Hestia vaguely knew, came over and handed it back to her with a frown. Before he could even open his mouth, Winnie audibly snorted and Hesty took the radio.

“Lemme guess,” Winnie drawled, arms half crossed and leaned back against the side of the truck with a smoke in hand, like a proper cowboy. “Mez is being an asshole again and giving you a hard time?”

He nodded, and Hestia rolled her eyes, motioning with the radio in her hand. “Y’know Boss, you can talk to him if you like.”

Winnie took another draw and smiled, not kindly. “I think poor ol’ Mez is sick of talking to me these days. You know who,” and she raised her eyebrows, not wanting to name names with a whole crowd of Burnish listening in, “has made me bug him over the radio a dozen times over. He’s gonna be a real pain in the neck for Mez and the gang the second he gets that bike of his running.”

Hestia shook her head and turned on the radio, and Winnie let her go, staring off down the road. She burnt through three cigs before Hesty was done, but she was practically eating them. Once the radio was off, she kicked herself off of the side of the truck, really starting to itch to get going again.

“So, what’d Mez say?”

Hestia looked over her shoulder, expression almost comically flat. “He asked if you were after sending the mission tits up on us.”

Winnifred didn’t deign that with a response, just raised an eyebrow, and as much as Hestia might’ve been able to take the heat, she was quick to loosen up this time.

“We’ve got a route, and our rendezvous pushed back. If start back the way we came we won’t have to fuck around with backroads, which means we can take the truck. Someone down the line heard from Max n’ Jonesy, and they’re apparently somewhere between here and our rendezvous, so we’ll be seeing them soon enough.”

“Meeting still the same?”

“Yep,” she popped the p, with absolutely no enthusiasm. “We’ll still be leaving this bunch with Ripley, New York Ripley that is. Same spot, just a different way in.”

“Well enough,” Winnie stretched her arms in front of herself and cracked her knuckles out, starting to pace along the bridge. “Any more feedback from our dearest dispatcher?”

Hesty gave her an odd side-eye and snorted. “Oh yeah. When I told him where we were, he asked if you were after taking Mad Burnish for a little swim. So I told him what you did and he said you’re gonna get a real good knock on the head one of these days, and that you’re gonna deserve it when you do.”

She threw her head back and made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat, ready to start grousing. “And what does he know?”

“I’m just saying. Sometimes you  _ do _ do shit without thinking all the way, you jump first and ask while you’re fallin’.”

Winnie snapped her head back down, something a little too serious in her face when she stared at Hestia, putting her hands on her hips and throwing them outwards, motioning at the burnt up husk of a vehicle still sitting around as she started stepping backwards.

“Well it worked this time, didn’t it!” and there was something just a little too sharp in the joke, a little too bitter in her voice, the spark of a fire-striker finally hitting.

She took another step back and—

Went right off the edge of the bridge.

✦✦✦

Should Lio have gone home? Probably.

Did he? No.

Instead, Lio pulled on his boots, shooed Bell off, and started ambling down the side of the river. He idly kicked rocks out of the way, and hopped down the little drop that hit at the treeline with ease.

This river didn’t directly lead to a pond or anything, at least not down this way and not within decent walking distance, but it  _ did _ get wider the further you went down. A good twenty minutes or so down the path there was an old bridge, almost like a train bridge. Maybe it had been a train bridge, at one point, but it’d been a long time since the trains had run. Winnie always said they’d mostly stopped after the Great Blaze.

Lio wondered sometimes, sincerely, if someday they could have Burnish trains. His ma had mentioned once that years and years ago, long before any of them were around at all, trains had run on fire and steam. Winnie said she’d been on one before, as a novelty. Way back before the Blaze, when she was just a little kid, and she said where she’d lived once had tons of trains going all over the place too, but they ran like cars on diesel and electricity. Most of the trains now were the wicked fast electric kind, and only in the cities. Lio had never been on one.

But trains would be good for Burnish, if they could figure out how to run them. Up here in the mountains, where Burnish were scattered across the remains of old mining towns and whatever else, Lio thought trains could be great. Although he couldn’t really say anything bad about their current roads.

Trains, as a hypothetical, may have been cool, but Lio was also an impatient teenager who thought there would be nothing better than the day his motorcycle was finished and he got to take it zipping down the winding mountain roads. (Winnie’s car was cooler, as in her real car, but he wasn’t allowed to touch it at all, let alone drive it. Probably because he’d totalled the Corolla.)

The trees overhead really started to close in, barely letting in what dim light there was left, so Lio lit a little fire in the palm of his hand, like a mimicry of a lantern, and promptly stumbled right into a fallen log. He frowned, and had to take a good jump to get over it. He could’ve burnt it, kinda really wanted to burn it, but Winnie would’ve had his head if he started a real forest fire.

Curse his height, he wished Winnie were his real mom. She was still a good half a foot taller than him.

He also really hoped she’d brought him those bike tires. He was banned from driving anything with a motor in it until it was done, which included when he’d gotten caught trying to weld one onto his pedal bike. It wasn’t fair, the hills out here were  _ brutal _ and Lio’s legs were  _ toothpicks _ . His ma didn’t get it; she exercised sometimes, like when she’d broken a doorframe doing pull-ups. Lio was a toothpick. He was a mop handle. A strong gust could’ve knocked him over.

(Nevermind that he was, unknowingly, the most powerful Burnish in a hundred mile radius and had recently accidentally hiked near ten miles without breaking a sweat.)

When the river started to get substantially wider, with the path becoming smaller and muddier, Lio quickly closed his hand to snuff out his flame-lantern and clambered up from the rocky edge of the riverbed to the top of the bank. He accidentally grabbed onto a loose piece of earth trying to pull himself up, getting dirt all up his elbows and knees in the process. He really hoped his ma didn’t mind that for her jacket.

Then he went and accidentally rubbed dirt up one side of his face trying to brush some off. Lio sighed, and left it alone.

There was a bit of a footpath up here, so it was easier walking than stumbling around on the rocks. Although, none of it was really hard compared to some of the mountain trails around here, especially ones runners used. When he summoned the fire back into his hands, flicking his wrist with it on reflex, he let it float up into the air this time, bobbing around him like a will-o’-wisp. It whispered and laughed in the way flames did as it bounced around, narrowly avoiding the trees and lighting everything in a soft pink glow.

It wasn’t too much farther down to reach the bridge, as it wasn’t a very tall bridge nor was it a very long one. There weren’t any proper rails on it at all and it stood on rickety wooden stilts coming out of the river. Personally, Lio kinda thought it was a miracle it hadn’t blown down yet.

The wood creaked when he stepped onto it, but it didn’t shift, even when he gave it a good stomp. Not that Lio was the most concerned about it falling over, honestly. It hadn’t yet. If anything, it was infinitely more likely it’d end up burnt than as a pile of wood in the river with him around.

He gave it a good hop too, just for posterity’s sake, and although it gave another creak it still didn’t shift. Satisfied, Lio nodded to himself and started walking out.

Although the river wasn’t all that wide itself, and the trees still crowded in on either side, it was still windier to stand out on the bridge than it was the banks. It wasn’t like it was horribly windy out either, but you would be hard-pressed to find a day in the mountains where there wasn’t at least a good breeze.

Lio stopped somewhere near the middle and put his arms out like a tightrope walker, grinning as he rocked forward to peek over the side of the bridge. The water was clear, and he could see himself reflecting back in it, even from this high up. His little flame spun around his head now, buzzing like a gnat that only said  _ burn, burn, burn _ . Lio flicked it with one finger.

“Bugger off,” he muttered, but he didn’t dispel it.

The bridge  _ was _ a temptation. All dry wood, creaky and old that no one would miss. Better than starting a grass fire by miles.

But. His ma told him he shouldn’t go burning down everything all willy nilly. (Probably because he was so fond of torching the yard, just a little—and not in the garden! She still didn’t like it.) And the bridge ran that precarious forest fire risk, something Lio wouldn’t be able to stop by himself. He’d never had to try before, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t that good. Winnie had had to put it out last time he’d set the yard on fire real bad cause he’d started panicking when it spread, and that’d only made it go worse.

The little flame practically perched on his shoulder, eager, and Lio shrugged it off. He turned to point at it with one finger. “You stop that,” he said, in the same stern voice he used with Bell when she was up to her mischief.

It listened well enough, or as well as it ever did. It would nudge into him from time to time, like a pet trying to get his attention. He ignored it in favour of swinging forwards again, balanced on his tiptoes to peer down. When he rocked back, he used the momentum to give a good hop, just to see how much the bridge would creak.

His fire, just like a troublemaking cat knocking things off of a table, decided to give him a good nudge in the shoulder in that moment. Which mostly just led to Lio losing his balance when he landed, windmilling his arms around uselessly, until the next thing he really registered was slipping on one muddy boot, going airborne, and landing in the river with an unceremonious  _ plop _ .

When he resurfaced, teeth already chattering from the temperature of the water, he could still see that little flame floating above midair up on the bridge. It wasn’t a very high bridge. It almost seemed to be laughing at him.  _ Arsehole _ .

Well. At least that had taken care of his dirt problem.

✦✦✦

There really was nothing like accidentally falling off of a bridge to provide a good shock to your system.

Winnie hit the water back first, with a very audible  _ smack  _ and a billow of steam. In a hundred other situations, she would’ve managed to stop herself from actually falling long before she was anywhere close to the water. In this one, she went down like a sack of bricks.

In fact, she was so goddamn stupefied by the fact that she had really just walked herself off the side of a bridge that she didn’t react much at all. She just stayed there for a few moments, sinking tranquil and still in the water. For once in her life she didn’t immediately heat up; the boiling in her veins smothered under cool water instead of jumping out, instead of making the whole thing bubble on kneejerk reaction.

It took another good few moments that felt far longer than they were, but reflex finally kicked in, jolting her into action. When she hit the surface, luckily, she hadn’t drifted off down the river. She coughed and spat out half a mouthful of boggy river water, ran one gloved hand back through her undoubtedly soaked hair, and looked up to see Hestia leaning over the side of the bridge and gaping at her like a fish.

And Winnifred opened her mouth, and she laughed.

Even from a distance, she could see Hestia’s face quickly going from shocked, to relieved, to unimpressed, and Winnie just gave the biggest shit-eating grin she could muster and raised her eyebrows.

“Well?” she called, cupping her hands like a megaphone. “Can I have a hand?”

Hestia gave a look that was something like fond, and threw down a length of flame-chain fashioned like a rope ladder. Luckily, it wasn’t too far a climb, or at least far from the longest ladder Winnie had ever climbed.

She hopped over the side of the bridge with a sharp  _ thud _ , still soaking wet from head to toe, her long coat looking especially miserable under the weight of all the water. As unfazed as one possibly could, Winnie fished her sodden pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, and didn’t so much as blink when pulling one out and attempting to light it mostly just resulted in the whole thing going up in flames and falling apart.

“What a thrill, huh?”

Hestia punched her in the shoulder.

“Dry yourself off already, we gotta get going.”

✦✦✦

Lio trudged onto the deck just as there was still a shred of sunlight left.

Being ever-absentminded in some regards, he nearly went and tracked water through the house, until he suddenly backpedaled and ended up shaking himself off on the front deck like a wet dog. He ditched his boots, and socks, just outside the door, and nearly everything else suffered the fate of being shucked off in the mud room, steamed, and thrown in a pile in the laundry room. He ended up bringing his ma’s jacket to hang in there too; it would need a wash, even the best Burnish flames couldn’t easily take things like the smell of wet and mud out of clothes. It wasn’t like they were scented. So really, he’d had to just about strip down to his long johns to keep from tracking anything through the house.

(Lio had never really gotten that expression. Most Burnish didn’t wear long johns, and they sure didn’t in the summertime.)

His ma’s odd expressions aside, it really was easier to dry out his clothes without accidentally igniting any of it once he was no longer actually in them. He had a tendency to heat himself up just a little too much every now and then, which had previously resulted in two pairs of half-melted now-unwearable wellies and the one time he’d gotten mad and singed the soles right out of a good pair of sneakers. (And started a minor fire, as per usual.) He was working on it.

Lio may have had what would be considered to be very good control among Burnish, but that was mostly because a lot of Burnish hadn’t awakened at all by his age, so he had an unfair head start in that sense. But he did know he burned a bit hotter than most Burnish, and it was easy for control to slip when he was upset. Plus, as he’d just unpleasantly experienced, his own flame wasn’t always keen on listening to him.

Which was to say, he was still a bit angry about his own fire deciding to give him a little nudge and knock him off of a bridge, even if unintentionally, because it was fire, and probably way less sentient than his cat. Probably. Either way,  _ that _ meant that he hadn’t really wanted to try to dry himself off in one go, even if he had been unconsciously letting off little bursts of steam as he’d walked home, because trying to dry himself off probably would’ve resulted in setting himself on fire, which meant his clothes would be on fire, and that could start a grass fire, or a forest fire, or any other kind of fire that would be really bad to start while home alone.

Thanks to all of that, the cold and damp had really started to seep into his bones. It didn’t help that he’d been feeling a chill all day. Nor did it help that it had started to get windy, and Lio had trudged home still decently soaking, and that he was probably a hundred pounds soaking wet on a good day.

Bell had already been waiting for him when he’d gotten home, but had given him a wide berth with all the water going everywhere. She leisurely trotted after him when Lio came out of the laundry room, left in his boxers and undershirt, and he groaned when he realized he’d left his stupid wool socks soaking in his boots. He was really starting to see the appeal of why Winnie would occasionally clothe herself in mean flame-made gear when she was working.

Now, luckily for Lio, his ma perpetually kept a few old changes of clothes in the porch closet, along with the old clothes in the hall closet. (There was nothing clean in the laundry room, as despite Fran’s help, Lio was a teenager who had been home alone for a week. Should he be left alone long enough, his clothes existed exclusively in piles on the floor of the laundry room, or in piles neatly hidden in his dresser or closet.)

Unluckily for Lio, he was still shivering a bit, and thanks to it being the summer, the woodstove wasn’t lit. It wasn’t that he wasn’t allowed to touch it, it was that he was pretty sure his ma would lose it if he fucked up the woodstove trying to figure out how to properly light a fire in it in the summertime. It would’ve been easier to light a bonfire, but he wasn’t going to light a bonfire, mostly because he would be too tempted to just sit in it and he wasn’t sure if he’d manage to put himself out again right now.

So, Lio ended up fishing an old t-shirt, a pair of too-big sweatpants with a drawstring, and another pair of socks out of the closet in the porch. He set up camp in the living room, rolled back up in a blanket.

The night air really brought a certain chill up here in the mountains, and it would bring wind too. He wasn’t as chilly as he’d been earlier, but even Burnish were affected by the sharp nip of a good gale. He could hear it starting to whistle outside the windows, and he crowded his flame close to his chest, cradling it into his ribcage and keeping it there as it flickered unsteadily.

It still didn’t really do anything about the shiver in his hands.

✦✦✦

If one were to, hypothetically, make a list of the ten most popular names for Burnish in what was still loosely the American Midwest, the first nine would be your classic, arguably tacky, fiery names. In fact, one of the most common Burnish surnames was Fotia, which was why Winnie went by it; like the Burnish equivalent of being named Winnifred Jones, or John Doe, if Winnifred had ever been comparable to John in popularity.

But after those first nine predictably fire-themed names, the tenth would’ve undoubtedly been Ripley. This sounded like a joke, like a made up fact you’d tell newly awakened or gullible Burnish just because it was somehow funny, or because there had historically (if the last three decades could be called historically) been a somewhat comedic amount of locally influential Burnish who went by Ripley.

However, Winnie Fotia was also the regional leader of Mad Burnish. And Mad Burnish ran a census. And an archive. Which was to say, if anyone hypothetically knew what a list of the most common names among Burnish would contain off of the top of their head, at the very least in a loose sense, it was her.

(She had gone by Ripley once too, but that was mere coincidence, she’d swear so. She’d gone by a lot of names before. Enough that sometimes people called her by names she didn’t remember going by.)

Ripley from New York was a perfectly capable Burnish who had once worked with Winnifred, but back then Winnie had still also been Ripley, so anyone who’d known both of them had picked up the habit of nicknaming them. Fran had been there, and she’d called them “Rip” and “Lee” respectively, but Winnie’s personal favourite was simply referring to the other one as Ripley II. Ripley: The Sequel. Ripley How-Many-Fucking-Ripleys-Do-We-Know-In-Mad-Burnish.

Even if Winnie had been Ripley I on the grounds of claiming she’d used the name first, she had ultimately lost the fight here when going by Ripley had slowly fallen out of use; an honestly inevitable fate when you went by a baker’s dozen worth of names and changed them like underwear.

(She was only Winnifred at home, even now. She was only  _ still _ Winnifred because she liked it, and because she had a son. Hestia hadn’t so much as muttered that name out loud all evening for a reason.)

She was chewing on her already-cut-too-short-to-chew thumbnail, leaning against the side of her car with a pair of carefully constructed Burnish sunglasses on her forehead and contemplating picking up Ripley as a name again just for the hell of it, when Hestia tapped her lightly on the shoulder.

“We’ve got company,” she said, low enough not to be overheard.

“I know,” Winnie had a wide radar, and a sharp set of eyes and ears to boot. “It’s Jonesy and Max, not Ripley.”

Not a minute later, and two familiar approximations of bikes rumbled into the little gravel pit they were waiting in. Hestia trotted over, but Winnie just gave a short wave from where she stood.

The other reason she liked to call the other one Ripley II was because they were always, always just a little bit late. And Winnie was chronically punctual. Hell, she was even early this time, despite the fact that they had good reason to be late.

She was maybe a little antsy. Eager to get this over with; to get their rescued Burnish off on their way, and for her to go off on her own way home, because she was honestly feeling more frazzled than she should be and—oh  _ shit _ .  _ Lio _ .

She whipped around, going to check the clock in her car only to remember that this was her Burnish car, not a real car, so it had no clock. Stupid fucking Cincy. It had to be getting late. She walked over to their commandeered truck with long strides, just a little bit hurried, and threw open the driver’s side door to stick her head in.

It was ten o’clock.

She hoped to god Lio hadn’t sent Fran home. He didn’t always do so well with being left home alone like this, with not knowing. Now that she was consciously aware of it, she could feel his flame buzzing at the edge of her awareness, like a gnat, nervous and slowly getting louder.

Nevermind, she wasn’t a little antsy. She was going to kick Ripley’s sorry ass if they didn’t get here on time. She hadn’t really registered their schedule getting pushed back had meant it’d been pushed back  _ this _ much.

Before she ducked back out of the cab, something behind one of the seats caught her eye. She hauled it out without a second thought. She wasn’t the nosiest person alive or anything, certainly not as nosy as Lio was, but she was always up for sticking her nose into whatever the feds were up to. What some might’ve called nosy she would call survival instinct at this point.

Ah. It was extra cuffs.

For a moment, she was going to throw the bag to the ground and ignite it all, but—she would need these, wouldn’t she.

Silently, she zipped up the bag and threw it in the backseat of her own car. They wouldn’t be a problem next time, at least for her. Or for Lio. She grimaced a little at the thought.

Necessary evils, necessary evils, soon enough he would be able to drive and then he’d be bugging her to let him go on the trade routes and she couldn’t send him out unprepared. Lio was still far too young for Mad Burnish, but he was sharp as a knife and stubborn as a rock, and might’ve been a bit of a spoiled brat if she felt up to admitting it.

She was busy tapping her foot against the ground while everyone else idly chattered, her arms crossed and far more restless than she wanted to be, when a rumble shook through the air, followed by a particularly mean looking bike cutting through the trees and into the clearing. Winnie sighed, somewhere between relieved and annoyed, and flipped down her sunglasses and shoved her hands in her pockets to go say hi.

✦✦✦

Although there’d barely been any sunlight left when Lio had gotten home, by quarter to ten it was practically pitch black out. Eventually, his lazy fatigue started to turn restless, leaving him twitching and tapping his toes against the armrest. Lio sighed and slowly rolled himself up off of the couch and onto his feet.

He was doing that thing—Fran called it fretting—where he would pace around, and run hot hands through his hair or twirl it tight around his fingers. Lio leaned to eye the phone on the wall in the kitchen, then glanced at the clock and back again. He  _ could _ call Fran, it was getting late and she would surely come over and at least sit with him until his ma got home.

But. It wasn’t midnight yet. Midnight was generally the set rule when it came to Winnie getting home; she wasn’t overdue until it was past midnight, and she was nothing if not on time. That was another part of the reason why he would get left with Fran too, she would stick around instead of Lio waiting up until then, and if Winnie was late, she was already there to stay over for the night. He twisted two fingers into his hair and straightened it out again. If he called now, if Fran came over now, and his ma got home on time, that would just be chickening out.

Bell chirped and swatted at Lio’s feet as he paced around between the kitchen and living room a few more times, rolling around on the floor in his wake only to hop up and chase him when he passed by again. He was going to wear down footpaths in the carpet at this rate, if not the kitchen tile too. Fran had said once that he fretted like a cat, so maybe that’s why he got along with Bell so well. Although Bell didn’t fret. She was lackadaisy as anything.

Finally, he settled on ducking into the pantry to grab a thin stalk of rhubarb, sticking it in his mouth like a cartoon rabbit chewing a carrot. Sometimes eating kept him occupied. He was also perhaps a little too fond of rhubarb.

Everyone always said Lio was real lucky some Burnish couldn’t get food poisoning. His ma also said he ate like a billy goat but he didn’t really get it, cause he didn’t eat  _ everything _ . He didn’t eat wood, or bark, like that time one of Mrs Connor’s goats had chewed up a wooden fence.

He did eat lichens though. And moss, a few times. And maybe once he’d accidentally bit into a raw egg.

He chewed on his rhubarb, a little thoughtful, or really just thrown off of one train of thought to contemplate every odd or regrettable thing he’d ever eaten. It wasn’t really the most pleasant line of thought. He was glad to be here, now, to have a pantry with real food even when he went and ate raw vegetables out of it.

When Bell started trying to practically climb his legs, meowing at him like she was nagging him to settle down, Lio crossed back into the living room and flopped over the back of the couch, staring upside-down at the turned off tv screen. He wiggled his toes and kicked his feet and listened to the way the wind rattled outside. It was no windstorm out, but the house was old and sometimes it would creak and groan and shift in the night, or the old shutters or patio door would rattle and shake when the wind picked up. Real windstorms were far worse than this. Last fall, in fact, their rhubarb bush had almost blown away.

Bell was quick to hop onto the couch and cozy up on top of his chest. Lio idly pet along her back, smiling even if every time Bell shifted knocked the wind out of him a bit thanks to her weight on his ribs.

“Bell-y Bell, you tub of lard, why do you always have’ta sit on me?” he murmured. Her only response was purring like a motor engine, warm and comforting, ever-so-slowly quietening down Lio’s antsiness.

Lio thought about his bike, sitting out in the garage, still tire-less and going nowhere. He had a pedal bike, sure, but he desperately wanted to get out on something that had a real engine in it before the summer was out and the snow came in.

He was getting tired of waiting, or maybe waiting was making him tired. (As if he hadn’t taken a dip into a river.) Waiting was exhausting. He hoped his ma had brought him bike tires.

(He hoped his ma was home soon.)

✦✦✦

Manhattan was a mean looking bike, and Ripley was a mean looking Burnish. Straight-faced and imposing, just shy of six foot like this in their boots and biking leathers. And Winnie had to stifle a petty grin thinking about it, because she was entirely aware that Ripley was nearly two inches shorter than her.

Really, the two of them were friends of sorts, but they didn’t see each other too much these days. Life was busy in Mad Burnish, and they’d pretty much split ways after Detroit, with Ripley back up around New York State and Winnifred all over the map. They shook hands, and pretty predictably pulled each other into a quick hug, thumping each other on the back like college kids; like they had when they’d met, back when they really had been stupid college aged kids.

“How’s it going Pres?” Ripley pulled back, still not letting go of the handshake.  _ Ah.  _ So that’s how this was going to go. “You still goin’ by Ripley again?”

“Yep,” Winnifred said, absolutely lying through her teeth. “Sure am.” She could see Hestia twitch out of the corner of her eye. They didn’t really have the time to waste, but Winnie was admittedly competitive and bullheaded and would gladly stand here still shaking Ripley’s hand in an iron grip like an idiot because she wasn’t going to lose this stupid dick measuring contest.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

Winnie shrugged, cool as a cucumber, “For you, I ‘spose so.”

Hestia sighed, audibly. She took the step forward to stand next to her Boss and crossed her arms and cocked one hip, Max and Jonesy still hovering somewhat awkwardly behind the two of them. She might’ve only come up to Winnie’s shoulder, but she had enough weight to her presence, and seemed to exude  _ please get the fuck on with this _ as she stared between both of them.

It took Hesty  _ very _ audibly clearing her throat for Ripley to finally roll their eyes and let go. “Alright, alright, I know we’re all running behind. How’d things go?”

Again, Winnie shrugged, sticking her thumbs in her belt loops. “They went. We did a headcount, looks like all of ours made it if the numbers were right, plus a good baker’s dozen or so of other stragglers.”

Ripley nodded, pleased but grim. “And we’ll take ‘em from here. You fit everyone in that over-glorified refrigerator?”

“Most of them weren’t in the state to keep their own rides stable, if they had one at all, so we managed to get everyone in there decently. But how’d some Mad Burnish from out your way end up that far west?”

“Well,” Ripley chewed their lip, looking over at the truck. “They’re lucky this happened to line up with your plans already, but someone might be in a hell of a lot of trouble from one of us. Dana did some checking around while you were out and it looks like it was what we first thought, which is to say either someone ratted on a whole team of runners out there, or they got real unlucky.”

“The feds didn’t seem to know what the hell was up, but,” Winnie made a vague noise, “always best to stay cautious. One of them made a ruckus down in Nashville. At least these ones were just runners, so it’s not like they’d actually know anything.”

“Always best to stay cautious…” Ripley hummed, looking all contemplative before that morphed into a cheeky grin, the kind that bared teeth. “Mez said you weren’t doing that one too well tonight Big Boss, and I’d believe him.”

Winnifred made a bit of a face and scowled, but before she could get another word in Hesty stepped between the two of them, staring down the both of them even if she may have been a head shorter. “Come on numbskulls, it’s getting late,” and she raised an eyebrow at Winnie, who was very suddenly reminded why she’d been so pissy in the first place. “If you two wanna have your friendly little fistfight, do it on your own time.”

And with that, she backed off expectantly, and Max and Jonesy slowly started to gravitate back to their own bikes. Ripley, somewhat oddly bemused, mouthed the word  _ fistfight?  _ while Winnie stuck her hands back in her pockets and started to walk backwards to her own car with a nod.

Ripley followed, the both of them leaning on the side of the car as Winnie expectantly put out one hand. They sighed for show and pulled out a pack, taking out two cigs and lighting them with a flourish before depositing one in Winnie’s waiting fingers. 

She brought it to her mouth, and then away again, flicking her sunglasses up onto her forehead to scrutinize it and squint at the pack.

“Really Rip? Menthols?  _ Really _ ?”

They snorted. “It’s all they had on the way. But I see the Mad Burnish smoking problem isn’t getting any better out here either.”

“Oh yeah, we’re an over-glorified chain-smoking club,” Winnifred gave a wry smile. “Maybe if we smoke enough cigs we’ll stop setting everything else on fire. We’re single handedly keeping the industry alive I’m sure,”

“Is it in the budget now? Can I go down the list and find out how much is set aside under ‘ _ Good Smokes, For One President Ripley. _ ’”

“Nah, you know we steal ‘em. The budget is for important shit.”

“Like what?”

“Buying pot plants.”

Ripley laughed, really laughed, with teeth and a rattling wheeze and everything. “You sure haven’t lost your sense of humour since I’ve seen you last. But what’s up? You were never one to be so antsy to get home early, unless you’ve got something going on, or someone waiting for you.”

Winnie took a slow drag, enough to take up a few seconds, and let the quiet sit for a moment.

“Well, you know me. I’m not gonna say too much out here, but you should come for a visit sometime.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and turned to give a small secretive smile to Ripley when she opened them again. “It’s been a while. And things change.”

“Well damn Boss, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you’d actually gone and settled down in that house of yours.”

At that, Winnie laughed too, in a quick sharp exhale.

“Yeah right. Don’t go counting on that any time soon.”

She flicked her cigarette up into a burst of flame, and gave Ripley a hearty knock on the back and a smile like a flashbang. “Thanks, but if I ever ask you for a smoke again and you’ve only got Menthols, just tell me you’ve got nothing. They’re fucking gross.” Her smile only widened at the scowl on their face. “I really do gotta get going though. Go on and take your Burnish, and come up for a visit soon if you’ve got the time.”

Ripley turned as Winnifred climbed into her car, now leaning over the driver’s door and watching as she rolled down one dark window they were sure was an absolutely ridiculous amount of effort to have exist in the first place. Classic. She was such a showoff.

“If I’m out your way, what, are we gonna have a fistfight then?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll knock your lights out.”

The engine started for real then, revving as if to punctuate that she meant it. Ripley took a step back, and they gave a crooked grin and a one handed salute.

“It’s good seein’ you Boss!”

And Winnie called back, “You too!” but it was mostly lost in the sound of spinning tires and crunching gravel as she took off like a shot.

✦✦✦

At eleven thirty, Lio had set up camp on the steps of the front deck again, blanket still draped over him, porch light on, fidgeting with the handheld radio in his lap. The wind had calmed down enough, leaving the night dark and silent (and lonely).

The porch light flickered, not even a real porch light; he’d just turned on the light in the mud room and left the door open. Contrary to any assumptions most would’ve made about any Burnish communities, there was barely any light pollution out here. The only lights Lio had were the soft yellow glow coming from the open door, from the kitchen and living room windows and their opened curtains, from the faint light of the moon.

No one was out and about at this hour tonight, no twinkling lights through the trees or commotions down the road. Even Bell was back inside, still curled up on the couch all warm and content.

Lio’s hands shook as he fiddled with the radio antenna, cursing with words his ma would curse him out for using as he tried to make sure the damn thing would work. His hands shook, and he wasn’t really sure if it was from the cool air, or the vague stress, or if he just would’ve shaken regardless.

See, if it hit midnight and his ma wasn’t home, he  _ could _ go call Fran on the wall phone. Her number was even on the fridge, and scrawled onto the notepad next to the phone to boot. She really may as well have been his second ma. But it was easier to be able to hold the radio in his hands, to wait outside and know he could just buzz Fran from here right away without having to get up or idle around the phone, hemming and hawing over whether he was  _ really _ going to call. That was sensible, wasn’t it? He was fine on his own, really, even if sometimes he felt a little like a frightened rabbit, his heart halfway to beating out of his chest because the damned radio just wouldn’t go right.

(It wasn’t a line of thought he liked to go down, wasn’t one he often had the chance to, but if Winnie—if his ma—if she wasn’t just late, if she never got home—

He didn’t know what he’d do then.)

He held onto the radio a little tighter.

Ten minutes to midnight, and Lio was starting to regret sitting outside in silence, wondering if he should’ve put on another record or turned on the tv or even brought sleepy Bell out with him, because she was really like a big ragdoll when she was picked up asleep, just to be there. It was too late now, he figured, if he went inside there wasn’t much use in coming back out again.

Five minutes to midnight, and the cool air felt like it was starting to seep through him, making him shiver more than shake. It really wasn’t that cold, and he shouldn’t have been that cold. (Every Burnish had some kind of dampener, and nerves snuffed out his flames before they could rise to the surface.)

Two minutes, at 11:58, and Lio counted down seconds near silently, just to stay occupied. He straightened up, put a firm set to his shoulders, accompanied by a serious face with a crease in his brow, like the one Fran said he got off of his ma. He wondered if they were really that alike.

As he mouthed  _ sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight _ , he started to fiddle with the radio dials, idle as all hell.

He fiddled a little further, turning it over in his hands, and it fell from his trembling fingers, clattering down the old wooden stairs with a series of dull clunks and landing somewhere under them with a racket that was far louder than it had any right to be. Lio sucked in a cold, sharp breath and scrambled out from underneath his blanket to reach for it, nearly going arse over teakettle as he tried to find it more with his hands than his eyes. But then he fell over for real, tumbling sideways down the last stair or two when a noise cut through the night.

The familiar rev and rumble of an engine, loud enough to feel like it shook the whole deck. Lio rolled over and popped up onto his feet and whipped around, mouth hanging open when he was just in time to watch his ma screech into the gravel driveway, parking not even like a racecar driver and more like this was an action movie and she was fucking Max Rockatansky in a wicked V8 Interceptor, nearly rolling the car over as it literally slid to a flaming stop a few feet away, spitting gravel and sparks. Cincy was a mean machine, and could take far more of a beating than her real car, which mostly just meant Winnie would put it through hell for kicks.

Lio stood stock still in place as the door cracked open and his ma hopped out, running a hand back through her hair like always, looking just the same as she had when she left, long coat and all. When she turned around and caught sight of Lio still up and still outside, her face lit up.

Winnie didn’t run, but she took long and swift strides, quick to fling her arms wide open and lean over to throw them around him. She was warm—not hot, just warm. The kind of warm that finally banished the shake in Lio’s hands and the shiver in his bones, rekindled the fire in his chest into something safe and steady, like a hot bath after a long day, like the sun shining down in a clear sky. She smelled distinctly like smoke, like campfire and cigarettes, like hearth and home to any Burnish.

The second Lio had enough sense to hug her back and put his arms around her neck, she straightened up and took him with her, picking him under the shoulders, right up off the ground and spinning them around a good few times with a big “I missed you so much!”

She tried to put him down gently, but he didn’t let go, standing up on his tiptoes to keep from hauling her all the way down.

“You alright firefly? You’re a bit clammy,” she said, voice much softer this time. “I’m sorry I was almost late.”

Lio held on a little tighter. “I’m just cold. And I missed you too.” His voice was so small, Winnie really could’ve cried. Then, even quieter; “Did you get my bike tires?”

She laughed, because she’d really spoiled her own son rotten and wouldn’t have traded him and all his bold tactless audacity for the world. Then she easily scooped him up, properly this time, propping him up on her hip like he was far smaller than he actually was. “How about this: I’ll bring you inside, put on the kettle, go out and put some stuff in the shed while it’s boiling, and  _ then _ we can talk about bike tires. Alright?”

“Yeah, sure,”

Winnie ignored the blanket on the deck for now, instead stepping around it and raising an eyebrow at the top of Lio’s head, and at the goosebumps still dotting his forearms. “What’d you even do to get so cold kiddo?” and she mentally crossed her fingers, hoping this wasn’t one of those weird Burnish side effects from her spending half the day in an icebox.

He was quiet for a moment, and then he gave a sigh that bordered on dramatic as his shoulders slumped with equal flair. “I fell into a river,” he mumbled, and another pause. “From off’a that old bridge.”

That made Winnie stop in her tracks, right in front of the front door. Lio looked up at her, but before he could ask what was wrong she snorted, and laughed again, far louder this time. She ruffled his hair, still laughing and shaking her head even when she kicked her boots off in the mud room.

The fire worked weirdly, like that.

“Of course you did, little prince. Of course you did.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you actually read this whole thing: thank you i know its long
> 
> yknow this was initially supposed to be like 4000 words and instead i worked on it for over a month and theres STILL things here that arent explicitly mentioned so, if anyone wants lore tidbits on my 16k fic thats already like 80% lore:
> 
> ✦ winnie is a hipster all her vinyls are like 70s-80s music. lio was listening to rumours  
> ✦ i didn't wanna state it outright in the fic cause it was awkward but yes lio was reading the little prince yes its relevant yes his ma still helps him read, hes working on it!!  
> ✦ yes lio only calls winnie his ma and not his mom  
> ✦ lio has curly hair!!!!  
> ✦ winnie became burnish in cincinnati but she's from britain (and lio is welsh)  
> ✦ i know it's mentioned winnie is over six foot here but without heels she's around 5'11"  
> ✦ fran's last name is fotia  
> ✦ idk useless fun fact hestia probably has orange hair  
> ✦ its cut content but winnie DOES have a motorcycle she just drives a burnish car as a power move  
> ✦ ill add more here if i think of any more good ones?


End file.
